Since the release of my first book, Alpine Cooking: Recipes and Stories from Europe's Grand Mountaintops, I am often asked the same question by amateur cooks and established chefs alike: “What is your favorite alpine locale?”
As someone who now lives in Milan, or what I think of as my satellite alpine headquarters, deciding the right answer is no easy task. For skiing, Cervinia and Zermatt are breezy two-hour drives from the city, door to door. Same with Courmayeur, a popular winter destination that is often a bit too busy with Milanese visitors. Personally, I love the wildness of Alto Piemonte and Aosta. My children, however, favor Northern Lombardia, including Bormio and Alta Valtellina. The choices are abundant, really.
Though, in the end, it is the mighty Dolomiti that offers the softest slopes to land on. The ski pistes? Managed better than anywhere else. (Yes, both Nordic and downhill.) The food? As delicious as it is diverse. Beyond its unspoiled natural beauty, the Dolomites are home to a dine-ski-hike triple threat: Dolomiti Superski, a region comprised of hundreds of miles of ski slopes peppered with rifugios, mountain huts where you can eat superb alpine Italian dishes without having to get out of your ski (or hiking) boots.
Nearly 150,000 hectares of mountainscape is a lot of upward ground to cover, but it’s worth it. The earth’s crust in the Northern Italian Alps, a majestic combination of rich magnesium and limestone, is simply different from any other rock formation in the world. The mountains possess a bronze shimmer under the morning’s light and, as the sun disappears, they reflect golden rose-quartz rays. High above sea ground, these mountains are hypnotic at levels best described as oceanic. I could stare at them all day. Correction: I have stared at them all day.
As a starter pack for Dolomites disovery, I narrowed its high elevations down to three unmissable towns: Cortina d’Ampezzo, San Cassiano and Corvara, or what I call the three C’s.
Cortina D’Ampezzo has always been a glamorous ski town, a second-home getaway for moneyed Milanese and ritzy Romans. But unlike the Superski Dolomiti towns, Cortina is in the Veneto region, not Alto Adige. It is as though the “jewel of the Dolomites,” as Cortina is often referred, possesses an alluring grace. Ampezzani is a term used to describe the locals, a demure bunch who are proud of their effortless natural and cultural riches. Should you specifically be a denizen of Cortina, however, you’re Cortinese. That distinction joins the list of rules one quickly learns after spending time there. Others include: Always invite your ski instructor to lunch. Never wear jeans to dinner. And the more fur, the better.
During a recent stay, there certainly was a fuzzy feeling of excitement in the air, likely due to the fact that Cortina, already once an Olympic village in 1956, is sceduled to host the Milano Cortina Olympic Games in 2026. (Thankfully, new accommodations spurred by the future hosting duties are said to include an on-piste, skiable way, which means you can ditch the shuttle bus to reach at least two of the mountain.) Around 6,000 residents live in Cortina, but come high season the population can swell to ten times as much. The season was in fully upward swing during my visit, which is why David Peterlin, my ski guide, and I drove 20-minutes from Cortina to Cinque Torri in search of untracked powder and chairlifted solitude.
Beginning at Cinque Torri, we skied the super 8 tour, named after the loops winding around the Lagazuoi peaks. Fresh off my first off-piste mini slope, however, I fell flat on my back on fresh snow. The wipeout turned out to afford an optimal view of Marmolada, the highest of the Dolomite mountains. Struggling to remove my glove, I texted a a photo of my sudden new view to a friend back in Milan who once told me she plans on having her ashes scattered across the Marmolada after her passing. And you know what? Laying there in the crunchy, packed snow, I finally came to understand her wish.
